Democrats spent four years telling America they were the only party that believed women.
Eric Swalwell resigned from Congress yesterday.
The View just explained why every Democrat in Washington stayed silent about him for years.
Swalwell Sat on the House Intelligence Committee While Washington Knew
Alyssa Farah Griffin spilled the beans on The View about Eric Swalwell.
"It was an open secret that he had issues with women," Griffin said – a former Pentagon official describing a sitting member of the House Intelligence Committee like he was a known hazard everyone just stepped around.
Swalwell didn't sit on the Agriculture Committee or the Small Business Committee.
He sat on the Intelligence Committee – the body that handles the country's most classified secrets, oversees the CIA, and receives briefings the average American will never see.
Griffin specifically flagged what that means for national security, noting that Swalwell's alleged vulnerabilities made him "susceptible, potentially to heavy drinking, to impropriety with women" – exactly the profile foreign intelligence services spend careers hunting for.
She didn't need to spell out the rest.
Fang Fang already did.
Fang Fang and the Chinese Spy Warning Democrats Ignored
In 2020, Axios reported that a woman named Christine Fang – known by the FBI as Fang Fang – had cultivated relationships with multiple American politicians during the 2010s, including Swalwell.
The FBI briefed Swalwell directly about the relationship.
He was never charged with wrongdoing.
But the question Griffin is now raising publicly is the one that was never seriously asked at the time: if Swalwell's reputation with women was openly known inside Washington, did China's intelligence apparatus know it too?
Foreign intelligence services don't need classified documents to find a congressman's weakness.
They need a weakness that nobody in his party wants to talk about publicly – which is exactly what Swalwell had for years.
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy confirmed it Sunday on ABC's This Week.
"Every member in Congress knows not to let any young staffer around Swalwell," McCarthy said.
Not some members.
Every member.
That's not a rumor mill.
That's institutional knowledge – and the entire Democrat Party had it.
Democrats Forced Out Al Franken and Then Protected Swalwell
Sara Haines noted on The View that the alleged conduct happened in 2019 – years after Democrats had already established that accusations against their own required action.
"He arrogantly did that again in 2019," Haines said.
The timeline is damning.
Democrats had already forced Al Franken out of the Senate by then.
They had already told the country that credible accusations against their own members required resignations.
And yet Swalwell sat in Congress, sat on the Intelligence Committee, ran for president in 2019, and ran for California governor in 2026 – until four women finally went on record.
While they stayed silent, Swalwell made sure to keep it that way.
His legal team sent cease-and-desist letters to accusers who had not yet been publicly identified.
Democrat strategist Adam Parkhomenko – whose wife was one of the women who came forward – asked the question publicly: if the accusers were anonymous, how did Swalwell know who to send the letters to?
Nobody in Washington answered that question.
Adam Schiff and other California Democrats only called for Swalwell to step aside after the situation became a political liability – and Hakeem Jeffries, who had urged Swalwell to end his gubernatorial bid, declined to say whether Swalwell should resign from Congress entirely.
That's damage control, not principle.
Hakeem Jeffries and Adam Schiff Stayed Silent Until It Was Safe
The party that impeached a president twice told voters that character in office was non-negotiable.
That argument just collapsed.
The man they kept on the Intelligence Committee – the man they let run for president, let run for governor, let spend years on cable news lecturing Republicans about character – had an open secret that everyone in Washington knew and nobody would say out loud.
The fact that it took The View to say it proves how well Democrats buried it.
Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown – a Democrat – said Sunday he wasn't surprised by any of it.
"There have been rumors after rumors after rumors," Brown said, adding that Swalwell's Washington colleagues knew exactly who he was.
Then Brown named names.
"That's what Adam Schiff said, that's what Nancy Pelosi said," Brown told reporters.
Schiff and Pelosi knew.
The Democrats who knew and said nothing – the ones who stood next to Swalwell on stages, handed him a national platform, and let the rumors circulate for years – waited until it was safe to call him out.
The damage to American intelligence that occurred while Washington covered for him doesn't resign along with him.
Sources:
- Alexander Hall, "The View host says Eric Swalwell's reputation with women was 'open secret' exploitable by enemies," Fox News, April 13, 2026.
- Axios, "Exclusive: Suspected Chinese spy targeted California politicians," Axios, December 8, 2020.
- ABC News, "Rumors of Rep. Eric Swalwell's alleged behavior swirled around Washington for years: Kevin McCarthy," ABC News, April 13, 2026.
- House Intelligence Committee, Official Committee Membership Records, U.S. House of Representatives.